Sympathy for Dolores: Moral Consideration for Robots Based on Virtue and Recognition

The Montréal Declaration for Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence states that emerging technologies ought not "encourage cruel behaviour towards robots that take on the appearance of human beings or animals and act in a similar fashion." The idea of a causal link between cruelty and kindness to artiicial and living beings, human or animal, is controversial and underexplored, despite its increasing relevance to robotics. Kate Darling recently marshalled Immanuel Kant's argument-that cruelty to animals promotes cruelty to people-to argue for an analogous link concerning social robots. Others, such as Johnson and Verdicchio, have counter-argued that animal analogies are often lawed, partly because they ignore social robots' true nature, including their lack of sentience. This, they say, weakens Darling's argument that social robots will have virtue-promoting or vice-promoting efects regarding our treatment of living beings. Certain ideas in this debate, including those of anthropomorphism, projection, animal analogies, and Kant's causal claim, require clariication and critical attention. Concentrating on robot animals, this paper examines strengths and weaknesses on both sides of this argument. It inds there is some reason for thinking that social robots may causally afect virtue, especially in terms of the moral development of children and responses to nonhuman animals. This conclusion has implications for future robot design and interaction.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Could Social Robots Make Us Kinder or Crueller to Humans and Animals?

Coghlan

Vetere

Waycott

et al. 2019

“…There lies an important question at the core of this issue, specifically on whether there are ways of considering the relationship between human and robot that are not slave-like. However, this falls outside the scope of the current paper (though for a beginning of an answer to this question, see [15]). In any case, this comparison illustrates the extent to which Levy's framework is unidirectional, which is further exemplified by his comparison of robot-sex with masturbation.…”

Section: Contra Instrumentalist Accountsmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…We will focus on the latter two points, but towards the end discuss their implications for design. We think it is likely that the degree of anthropomorphism [11,15,45,46] will play an important role for especially the second and third topics. This needs to be further investigated, but for the purposes of this paper we will discuss robots that tend towards the anthropomorphic rather than the more functional end-like conventional sex toys-of the anthropomorphism spectrum.…”

Section: Virtue Ethics and Social Roboticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing Virtuous Sex Robots

Peeters

Haselager

2019

Self Cite

We propose that virtue ethics can be used to address ethical issues central to discussions about sex robots. In particular, we argue virtue ethics is well equipped to focus on the implications of sex robots for human moral character. Our evaluation develops in four steps. First, we present virtue ethics as a suitable framework for the evaluation of human-robot relationships. Second, we show the advantages of our virtue ethical account of sex robots by comparing it to current instrumentalist approaches, showing how the former better captures the reciprocal interaction between robots and their users. Third, we examine how a virtue ethical analysis of intimate human-robot relationships could inspire the design of robots that support the cultivation of virtues. We suggest that a sex robot which is equipped with a consent-module could support the cultivation of compassion when used in supervised, therapeutic scenarios. Fourth, we discuss the ethical implications of our analysis for user autonomy and responsibility.

“…The past decade has seen a growing philosophical discussion about the moral standing of robots. For example, Bryson [6] has argued that robots are property and that they have no moral standing, whereas Gunkel [22] has argued that we consider the question regarding robot rights (for a recent overview of the discussion, see for example [7]). There is also work in the field of human-robot interaction (HRI) that acknowledges that there might be ethical problems with the way people treat robots, often framed as problems concerning anthropomorphization (e.g., [2,17,20,31]).…”

Section: Are Social Robots Kantian Dogs? Using Virtue Ethics For Thinmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, in robot ethics, Sparrow [32,33] has offered sophisticated arguments about what it means to take a virtue approach to robotics. Cappuccio et al [7] have argued for giving social robots moral consideration that is not based on intrinsic moral dignity and that does not attribute rights, but on the idea that relationships with robots offer to human agents opportunities to cultivate vices and virtues. And in this journal Coghlan et al [16] have reported that social robots, for example robots in the shape of animals, may affect virtue in terms of effects on the moral development of children and responses to nonhuman animals.…”

Section: Are Social Robots Kantian Dogs? Using Virtue Ethics For Thinmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Use Virtue Ethics for Thinking About the Moral Standing of Social Robots: A Relational Interpretation in Terms of Practices, Habits, and Performance

Coeckelbergh

2020

Social robots are designed to facilitate interaction with humans through “social” behavior. As literature in the field of human–robot interaction shows, this sometimes leads to “bad” behavior towards the robot or “abuse” of the robot. Virtue ethics offers a helpful way to capture the intuition that although nobody is harmed when a robot is “mistreated”, there is still something wrong with this kind of behavior: it damages the moral character of the person engaging in that behavior, especially when it is habitual. However, one of the limitations of current applications of virtue ethics to robots and technology is its focus on the individual and individual behavior and insufficient attention to temporal and bodily aspects of virtue. After positioning its project in relation to the work of Shannon Vallor and Robert Sparrow, the present paper explores what it would mean to interpret and apply virtue ethics in a more social and relational way and a way that takes into account the link between virtue and the body. In particular, it proposes (1) to use the notion of practice as a way to conceptualize how the individual behavior, the virtue of the person, and the technology in question are related to their wider social-practical context and history, and (2) to use the notions of habit and performance conceptualize the incorporation and performance of virtue. This involves use of the work of MacIntyre, but revised by drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of habit in order to highlight the temporal, embodiment, and performative aspect of virtue. The paper then shows what this means for thinking about the moral standing of social robots, for example for the ethics of sex robots and for evaluating abusive behaviors such as kicking robots. The paper concludes that this approach does not only give us a better account of what happens when people behave “badly” towards social robots, but also suggests a more comprehensive virtue ethics of technology that is fully relational, performance-oriented, and able to not only acknowledges but also theorize the temporal and bodily dimension of virtue.